Mount Rushmore National Memorial Research Articles

Mount Rushmore's Rock-Block Monitoring System

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 3 miles southwest of the town of Keystone. The Memorial is home to the famous sculpture that bears the same name. After several years of planning and funding work, in 1927 the artist and sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his crew began carving the sculpture. Featuring the likenesses of four U.S. presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson — the sculpture has become one of the most famous and iconic monuments in the United States. It's estimated that over 2 million people travel each year to visit the Memorial.

Occurrence of North American Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) in the Black Hills, South Dakota

During the twentieth century, the North American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) was common in the Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming. However, the low number of recent observations in the region has led to concern that porcupine populations have declined. We conducted systematic surveys to assess porcupine occurrence at two hundred and sixty-three 1-ha sites in the Black Hills National Forest, Custer State Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, and Wind Cave National Park during 2016–2017. We observed no porcupines or recent feeding sign. We also noted few recent observations in information compiled from online databases and from other natural resource surveys with which we have been involved in the South Dakota Black Hills. Given the apparent abundance of porcupines in this area in the twentieth century, our results suggest that populations have declined dramatically. Predation by mountain lions (Puma concolor), habitat loss, and human-caused mortality are potential contributing factors, but estimating the degree of population declines and assessing hypotheses about the causes are hindered by a lack of long-term data on the region's porcupine populations. Moreover, accounts of the region's mammalian fauna suggest that porcupines were not abundant in the region during the late 1800s but became common in the early twentieth century.

Rock Mass Characterization and Stability Evaluation of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Keystone, South Dakota

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to characterize the rock mass at Mount Rushmore National Memorial (MORU) and to evaluate the stability of the presidential sculptures. The sculptures are carved in granite, but quartz-mica schist and minor outcrops of pegmatite are also present within the site area. We divided the MORU area into four “regions” to collect discontinuity data. Since the sculptures were not accessible during this study, we used light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data and Split-FX software to determine the orientations of both the discontinuities and the slopes on the sculptures. The rock mass characterization results, using both the Rock Mass Rating system and the Q-system, indicate the granite, schist, and pegmatite classify as fair to good rock. Kinematic analysis results indicate that the potential for planar, wedge, and toppling failures exists for various slopes on each of the sculptures. The factor of safety (FS) values against planar and wedge sliding, ignoring cohesion, range from 0.1 to 0.8 and from 0.2 to 1.3, respectively. Since failures have not been observed at the memorial, we back-calculated the amount of cohesion required to raise the FS values to >1. The back-calculation results show that both cohesion and friction contribute to stability of the sculptures. Using the Slide program, we performed an overall slope probabilistic analysis for the slopes on which the MORU sculptures are located. The analysis determines the mean factor of safety (FSM), reliability index (RI), and probability of failure (PF) for the slopes. For the static condition, the analysis resulted in FSM, RI, and PF values ranging from 3.3 to 4.5 percent, 3.3 to 7.8 percent, and 0 percent, respectively. With a seismic load coefficient of 0.14 applied to the slopes, the corresponding values were: 2.6 to 4.1 percent, 2.9 to 4.7 percent, and 0 percent. For both the static and seismic conditions, the results indicate that, overall, the slopes of the sculptures are stable.

Classic Project: Mount Rushmore National Memorial

One of the most recognisable symbols of the USA, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial granit sculpture in South Dakota's Black Hills.

Application of Natural Resource Condition Assessments to Two Small National Parks

ABSTRACT: Using a scorecard approach, we assessed the condition of natural resources within the major habitats in Mount Rushmore National Memorial (MORU), South Dakota, and Niobrara National Scenic River (NIOB), Nebraska, as part of a “pilot” effort to determine a National Park Service (NPS) system-wide approach to Natural Resource Condition Assessments (NRCA). Both parks are considered small — MORU because of size (517 ha) and NIOB because the NPS does not own land within the boundary of the park. Small parks often contain resources that are not well-known because they lack research, monitoring, and staff expertise. However, we found adequate information to assess the condition, and sometimes trend, of 12 of 15 biodiversity and process indicators at MORU and 17 of 22 at NIOB, although most of the data we used to establish reference conditions came from sources outside of the parks. We believe forested habitats at MORU and NIOB are in poor condition and deteriorating primarily due to the suppression of fi...

Review: This Ecstatic Nation: The American Landscape and the Aesthetics of Patriotism

Review: This Ecstatic Nation: The American Landscape and the of By Terre Ryan Ryan, Terre. This Ecstatic Nation: The American Landscape and the of Patriotism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011, xv+171 pp. ISBN: 9781558498730, paperback.This new book by Professor Terre Ryan (from Loyola University Maryland) is like a celebration of the U.S. and it starts from a moment in 19th century when the population of the United States fascinated with its environment and its landscapes: an era when Americans, seduced by their country's beauty, fell in love with their (p. 1). Then, the wild American landscapes, as represented in classic and pastoral paintings such as those by Thomas Moran, were idealized and copied, and they naturally became the aesthetic backdrop of expansionist mythology (p. 1). In her reflection on American identity and its construction, Terre Ryan coins this concept as the Manifest Destiny (p. 2). This twofold perspective from the 19th century (landscape mythology) is still fundamental nowadays for Ryan who argues that landscape aesthetics remain so influential in contemporary culture that they may encourage us to view our environment much as expansionist-era boosters viewed it - a stockpile of resources to be exploited or as scenery to be preserved (p. 4).Ryans' linking of images, writings, and American history is what really makes this book special. Starting from there Ryan looks at some of the famous U.S. symbols and places that now constitute the American imagery. She is fully aware of the symbolic role of places such as Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the American nation-building. Reflecting on the power of iconography, she argues that landscape is as much a collection of ideas and values as a book or a law or anything shaped by human imagination... (p. 8). This is how Terre Ryan articulates her concept of Aesthetics of Patriotism to be found in her book's title; in other words, how patriotism emerges from these paintings (p. 9). Her whole book is like a narrative written in the first person, with some analysis and theoretical insight about the deep, symbolic, inner meanings of these images and commemorating places. In fact, Terre Ryan does not blindly reproduce the discourse of the founding fathers and can sometimes be critical towards 19th century mentalities and this legacy of patriotic totems (p. …

Environmental noise measurements at Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

Assessing noise in national parks remains a subject of research and study for two general problem areas: the reaction to noise by park visitors and the effects of noise on wildlife. Traditional methods for environmental noise assessment such as methods to assess the effects of airport noise on residential communities are inappropriate and inadequate for the National Park issues, and Schomer and Stanley (2009) developed a research plan to gauge the sound quality of a hike, not annoyance. The goal of this research is to develop methods to assess the sound quality of different park soundscapes by being able to rate the acoustical experience of park visitors. This report concentrates on physical measurements of the acoustic environment. Our approach for the measurements was to select a trail that was used regularly, but not particularly heavily, that had regular, distinct anthropogenic noise, and that was readily accessible. This paper provides an analysis of the acoustical measurements. In particular, it provides an analysis of the data collected by the 20 fixed monitors, an analysis of the data collected by the mobile monitor, and an analysis of the GPS data used to establish the mobile monitor position as a function of time.

A Symbol of Democracy: The Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Using hand tools, power tools, and dynamite, the artist Gutzon Borglum and his crew spent more than a decade crafting the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. In the years since its completion, in 1941, the monument has become a symbol of the United States.

FIRE AND FOREST HISTORY AT MOUNT RUSHMORE

Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota is known worldwide for its massive sculpture of four of the United States' most respected presidents. The Memorial landscape also is covered by extensive ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forest that has not burned in over a century. We compiled dendroecological and forest structural data from 29 plots across the 517-ha Memorial and used fire behavior modeling to reconstruct the historical fire regime and forest structure and compare them to current conditions. The historical fire regime is best characterized as one of low-severity surface fires with occasional (> 100 years) patches (< 100 ha) of passive crown fire. We estimate that only approximately 3.3% of the landscape burned as crown fire during 22 landscape fire years (recorded at > or = 25% of plots) between 1529 and 1893. The last landscape fire was in 1893. Mean fire intervals before 1893 varied depending on spatial scale, from 34 years based on scar-to-scar intervals on individual trees to 16 years between landscape fire years. Modal fire intervals were 11-15 years and did not vary with scale. Fire rotation (the time to burn an area the size of the study area) was estimated to be 30 years for surface fire and 800+ years for crown fire. The current forest is denser and contains more small trees, fewer large trees, lower canopy base heights, and greater canopy bulk density than a reconstructed historical (1870) forest. Fire behavior modeling using the NEXUS program suggests that surface fires would have dominated fire behavior in the 1870 forest during both moderate and severe weather conditions, while crown fire would dominate in the current forest especially under severe weather. Changes in the fire regime and forest structure at Mount Rushmore parallel those seen in ponderosa pine forests from the southwestern United States. Shifts from historical to current forest structure and the increased likelihood of crown fire justify the need for forest restoration before a catastrophic wildfire occurs and adversely impacts the ecological and aesthetic setting of the Mount Rushmore sculpture.

Conservation Value of Mount Rushmore National Memorial's Forest

Abstract Justifying the maintenance of small natural areas requires understanding their contribution to the conservation of specific natural resources. Mount Rushmore National Memorial (MORU) is a small portion of the Black Hills of western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. Because it has been protected from logging since the late 1930s, it may serve as an important part of the Black Hills forest as a whole. To understand this role, we investigated the extent and degree of logging activities in the memorial and compared the current structure of the MORU forest to that in the rest of the Black Hills today and before Euro-American settlement. Our results suggest that approximately 29% of the park has had no tree harvesting activity, 18% of the park has had only selective cutting of trees, and 66% (344 ha) of the park's area is covered by old-growth forest. Based on current estimates of similar forest in the remainder of the Black Hills, the forest at MORU constitutes the second-largest area of old-growth po...

Great white fathers: the story of the obsessive quest to create Mount Rushmore

Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, hoped that ten thousand years from now, when archaeologists came upon the four sixty-foot presidential heads carved in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they would have a clear and graphic understanding of American civilization. Borglum, the child of Mormon polygamists, had an almost Ahab-like obsession with Colossalism--a scale that matched his ego and the era. He learned how to be a celebrity from Auguste Rodin; how to be a political bully from Teddy Roosevelt. He ran with the Ku Klux Klan and mingled with the rich and famous from Wall Street to Washington. Mount Rushmore was to be his crowning achievement, the newest wonder of the world, the greatest piece of public art since Phidias carved the Parthenon. But like so many episodes in the saga of the American West, what began as a personal dream had to be bailed out by the federal government, a compromise that nearly drove Borglum mad. Nor in the end could he control how his masterpiece would be received. Nor its devastating impact on the Lakota Sioux and the remote Black Hills of South Dakota. Great White Fathers is at once the biography of a man and the biography of a place, told through travelogue, interviews, and investigation of the unusual records that one odd American visionary left behind. It proves that the best American stories are not simple; they are complex and contradictory, at times humorous, at other times tragic.

Tourism and nationalism

The viewing of heritage sights by domestic tourists is a key aspect in the formation and maintenance of a national identity, especially when nationalism is understood as an “imagined community.” Tourist sights may function in the same way as do museums in Benedict Anderson’s classic study of nationalism: as places presenting the defining characteristics of nationhood and displaying historical evidence of its existence. Using three examples from the American state of South Dakota—Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Wall Drug Store, and Rapid City Dinosaur Park—this article argues that, despite their recent creation, each provides a foundational history and “archeology” upon which a national identity can be built.

Rock block analysis at Mount Rushmore National Memorial : Boyle, W J; Vogt, T J Proc Conference on Fractured and Jointed Rock Masses, Lake Tahoe, 3–5 June 1992P743–750. Publ California: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1992

Rock block analysis at Mount Rushmore National Memorial : Boyle, W J; Vogt, T J Proc Conference on Fractured and Jointed Rock Masses, Lake Tahoe, 3–5 June 1992P743–750. Publ California: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1992